What should the top priorites be for our nation's first CTO?

The role of national CTO will provide the Obama administration with the first true technology transformation capability at the cabinet level. This is a very important consideration, as previous approaches have inevitably gotten lost within organizational 'stove-pipes' and competing interests.

The most important thing that the new CTO can do is help to define national priorities and set the roadmap expectations for where we need to be in the next 5 or 10 years. This exercise has two parts:

1 - Setting expectations for technology-focused national goals.

2 - Setting expectations for how technology can help resolve other national issues or problems that may not necessarily be considered within the domain of the CTO.

Specific priorities for either of these categories might include the following considerations:

1 - Adoption of Intelligent Healthcare practices (i.e. this extends much further than the adoption of EMR/EHR systems - Intelligent Healthcare post ).

2 - The ability to track policy initiatives in an automated fashion and link that also to program performance tracking.

3 - Focus on "Technology Multipliers" - i.e. technology-based initiatives that are specifically designed to solve more than one problem at a time.

4 - Re-evaluation and reinvention of traditional industries (already perhaps underway in Energy and Transportation - so it could focus on how technology facilitates and accelerates this process).

5 - Empowering citizen groups and government entities (state, local, federal) to help solve problems through "Federated Collaboration."

While some of these activities have been occurring for a few years, the strategic role of the national CTO and the commitment by the Obama administration could provide the momentum to take such efforts to an entirely new level.


Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Is there a Cultural Bias behind Innovation?

We'll start with an interesting and perhaps controversial question - there is a widespread perception that certain cultures are inherently more innovative than others, is this myth or reality? This question strikes to the heart of whether innovation can be instilled, taught or otherwise coaxed from sources where it currently doesn't exist.

The traditional thinking goes that the United States is a leader in Innovation and other markets / regions such as China, Japan or India follow in our footsteps by becoming more effective in application of already existing technologies / innovations. This viewpoint of course only seems to hold water when viewing these regions at our present time (in other words, this doesn't represent long-standing historical precedents).

So, let's assume for a moment that the United States is more Innovative in terms of a few key indicators:

• Number of patents issued
  
• Number of scientific papers published
• Number of academic institutions engaged in research
• per capita income of nation targeted towards to R & D
• Number of industries started or more or less headquartered / centrally focused in the country

So, if we follow the assumption, why does the United States exhibit such advantages? Is it a result of our previous focus on Cold War research and the Space Race? Is it a byproduct of our economic climate, or is it somehow a product of our culture ? Or can these elements readily be separated ?

The reason I'm asking this question today is due to a great deal of discussion that I've overhead lately regarding the overall decline in enrollment within the United States in Science and Technology degree programs. There seemed to be a lot of concern that we are losing a competitive advantage as a result of this situation. It got me to thinking what factors might be involved in determining how or why this type of success occurs and whether it was truly related to the numbers of folks attaining science or tech degrees.

The short answer in my opinion, is yes, there is a cultural bias. This has nothing to do with ethnocentrism or jingoism - but rather a recognition of certain factors which are normally not considered. I'll address what those factors are in the next post...



Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

The Tools of Innovation part 1: Concept Maps

If we wish to view Innovation as something that truly can be reproduced or engineered (at the individual or organizational level), then there must be a set of tools to facilitate those activities, right? It is perhaps hard to imagine what they might be without ever having worked with them and of course that's exactly how I approached the subject just a few years ago.

But I started small and worked my way up and all that while a new breed of tools were being introduced to the market as well. My introduction to this realm was the "Concept Map." Concept mapping tools are akin to Mind Mapping tools but without some of the constraints (in terms of how thought trees are captured and displayed).

The wikipedia definition for Concept Mapping is - Concept mapping is a technique for visualizing the relationships among different concepts. A concept map is a diagram showing the relationships among concepts. Concepts are connected with labeled arrows, in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The relationship between concepts is articulated in linking phrases, e.g., "gives rise to", "results in", "is required by," or "contributes to".

In other words, the concept map allows you to quickly build, visualize and capture a crude ontology of any concept/idea. The tool that I've been using is freeware, it's the de facto standard - CmapTools. The product is in transition and it is now being sold commercially as well as Ceryph Insight.

What I like about it is the ability to save your designs to XML and if you get the plugin (Cmap Ontology Editor), to save your Concepts Maps as OWL files. So how does one use a Concept Mapping tool? Here's how I do it:

• Step 1: I have it loaded on a laptop and ensure that there is a projector available
• Step 2: I have an agenda of related topics, issues, assumptions or ideas already gathered in bullet point fashion on a sheet, which is either for me or handed out to a group.
• Step 3: Throw it on the chart - basically one begins to place the various elements on a screen and see how they relate to one another or whether they have merit.
• Step 4: Downselect - focus areas are developed and dead-ends are deleted.
• Step 5: Pretty it up - This is where we add some design elements to make the diagram outputs suitable for inclusion on presentations, web sites etc. This is also when you decide what text to add to the connecting arrows...

So what does it look like when you're done, well, it can look like any diagram, here are some examples:


This diagram follows a more traditional concept map portrayal



This diagram looks less like a concept map but can still be saved as XML

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Metaphors for Design

My all time favorite example of the use of metaphor goes back to the middle ages; traveling bards used to present stories and poems to audiences from town to town before the advent of print. This was an interesting variation of storytelling tradition that occurs in most cultures – but what many of the bards did to manage their storytelling experience was construct the story-telling experience out of a metaphor. The metaphor was often imagining a house – and within each room the storyteller would locate an important part of the plot, items within the room would trigger specific details in the retelling. In many ways what this represented was a mental discovery and / or content management application. We’ve all variations of this them today – the most obvious example is what we refer to as a “Chat Room,” but other applications have used the room and structures metaphors for similar functionality.

So why metaphors, what’s the value proposition we’re describing here? A metaphor is generally only useful if it applied as a means to leverage existing knowledge to help facilitate some other action. That action might be story telling or driving heavy equipment, but in most cases the action we’re hoping to facilitate is somewhat complex in nature. So the question is; can someone learn everything they need to know about fulfilling this new complex action in a reasonable timeframe, and if the answer is no, then what exactly can be done to reduce the learning curve? Simply because someone is using a new technology to accomplish a familiar task it doesn’t mean that all aspect of the task need to change also. There are many other benefits to this type of continuity besides a reduction in learning costs; they include:

• Greater likelihood of acceptance and adoption of the capability

• A Greater likelihood that the new capability will be able inter-operate with examples of the old capability still in place elsewhere

• The ability to improve on but maintain process approaches that have proven themselves to be effective.
  

Example

The best example of something I’ve been involved with that is essentially a metaphor is an online magazine or newspaper. Perhaps this was an easy step to take due to the nature of Internet and it’s ability to disseminate information, but the fact of the matter is that it allowed for massive restructuring of the previous business model (including operations such as printing and delivery) without significantly changed the user perception of the capability or product. The biggest difference of course is the lack of paper involved with the Internet versions; however this is something that is being worked out by vendors right now – new delivery interfaces that are nearly as thin as paper and are bendable will be available in the next several years. Along with anti-glare screens this will come fairly close to the hands-on tactile experience of reading a real magazine (and much more efficiently as the device can upload any magazine’s content through wireless connection and is not disposable).

Following the metaphor then, all aspects of content design (including advertising) would approximately the current look and feel of typical magazines. The one area that the current manifestation of the metaphor cannot handle which the new one can is the ability to embed interactivity with other applications. For the interactivity, the only guidepost we have with current publications are written games such as crossword puzzles. In these types of situations though, I think what actually happens though is that we tend to borrow from multiple metaphors to build a new capability. So, the new magazine borrows metaphors from video gaming, broadcasting, old publishing models and B2B web applications to achieve a new type of approach. This is not too different than what has just happened with the new i-Phones.

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Ideation

This is a new term that has come in vogue over the past several years and one fairly closely aligned with the notion of Innovation engineering. I thought it might be worthwhile to do some comparison and contrast between the two concepts (with the obvious disclaimer up front that I don't believe them to be the same thing).

First let's assess the definitions:

1 - Ideation: and this my take on it, as I somewhat doubt that there is any industry standard view as to what it is just yet. Ideation represents the front-end portion of concept and product development efforts. It is somewhat synonymous with brainstorming but more comprehensive than that. It is an attempt to standardize the creative process early in the initiative stage in order to produce more consistent or agreeable results. It is sometimes loosely coupled with follow-on product development efforts but seldom fully integrated with them. The connection though is why many PLM (product lifecycle management) vendors refer to ideation.

2 - Innovation Engineering: This represents an undercurrent or element within a larger set of lifecycle processes. While there is always a focus on innovation at the front of any endeavor that is not where innovation ends. There is a bit of a dual meaning at play here as well, when we talk of innovation engineering were not only referring to the application of innovative thinking to other problem sets, we are also discussing how to manage the creative process of innovation itself to make it more predictable.

So, we can see that there are some obvious overlaps here, including:

1 - The focus on creative problem solving
2 - The ability to produce more predictable results
3 - The emphasis on applying creative perspectives at the initiation of projects

The differences could be characterized this way:

1 - Ideation is more front-loaded whereas innovation engineering seeks cradle to grave improvements
2 - Innovation engineering is meant to have more of an applied focus
3 - Ultimately, ideation will never provide substantial metrics to determine its effectiveness given its esoteric and usually disconnected nature (i.e. lack of integration into the follow-through efforts)


copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

How do you choose a right architecture?

"Right" is always subjective and by that I mean it is driven by the circumstances of your engagement:

* The Client (systems / NETOPS) Environment
* The Client Organization
* Functional Requirements
* End User Expectations

I'm assuming that you're referring to a solutions architecture - this can be captured at multiple levels using any number of frameworks or notation conventions. Usually the framework, notation and tools you use will be dictated by the client and if not obviously you should use whatever you're most familiar with. The architecture often also has a temporal aspect to it, in that many clients will want to better understand their current situation, the "to be" solution and the transition from 'a' to 'b'.

The design choices are tied directly to the unique problems and tradeoffs that exist within the target organization. So, for example if a client is having major difficulties with performance on database systems and perhaps their SOA services you would look at using caches, XML appliances and more efficient messaging.

There is no one size fits all scenario. As much as we'd like to capture all of this with patterns or COTS software there will always by unique requirements. The key is to understand how much of the time-saving techniques and tools can be applied to the enterprise problem space along with the client-specific architecture / design.

Links:

• http://agile-ea.blogspot.com/
• http://www.semantech-inc.com/index.html
• http://www.semantech-inc.com/presentations.html

copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas

What does the term "Personalized Medicine" mean to you and in what way do you think it has the greatest potential?

I think a better term might be "Contextualized Healthcare," this is more sweeping and covers a lot of converging trends (as well as technical capabilities). Medical care is being handled in a more pragmatic way than before through an improved understanding of both personal and group level contexts - this covers as you say both prognostics and diagnostics but also provides us a framework for managing continuity of care for individuals across their lifetime and for various demographic groups.

The age old dilemma for Medicine and Philosophy is balancing a priori and a posteriori knowledge in practical application - the one mitigating force here is "context." As we become more focused on the ability to understand and predict specific scenarios (rather than dependence on generalized theory), quality of care will improve dramatically.

Copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas

Semantic use of H1 heading

As with most things related to Semantics, context is everything. Back in the beginning days of the web, H1 was the site title and sometimes even served as a logo. Today H1 is more akin to a major heading, however it was never quite large enough (without modification) to serve as a true headline in the Newspaper sense.

Now that we do have much more flexibility to modify tags using CSS, we can in essence define our own semantics. The other side of the question is how does the search engine world view semantic extraction of meaningful information from sites. Well, it is easy to develop algorithms or business rules that assign importance based upon header designation and placement.

Long story short - the "should" aspect of the question is perhaps a bit too prescriptive. What we ought to be doing, always, is to continue to explore new ways to improve exploitation of this technology - both from provider and consumer perspectives.

copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas

IT Talent Shortage: Should IT executives do more to create local talent instead of just complaining about the trend?

There is no IT talent shortage and never has been. This myth was and still remains a ploy to promote Globalization. Millions of IT workers have had to switch careers here in the states due to the odd fluctuations caused by shifts in policy related to outsourcing and visa approvals.

We should of course always encourage local development of talent, but it is important that they understand that the career path they've chosen is not subject to exportation elsewhere...

copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas

What aspects are important to have in a "online newsroom" (social media newsroom)?

Well, the RSS is important (and other social media tools as well), but I think it's worth keeping in mind the scale of the task that you're tackling with an online newsroom.

It is more or less the equivalent of a "news wire," in other words you are more than likely going to be providing a continuous stream of content. The most important thing for achieving that kind of output is securing relationships with a number of content providers. So, what is really necessary is a platform that supports multiple author contributions w/ minimal editorial management from the publisher...

Copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas